www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances
2 corrections found
All inherited knowledge was passed down by speech and memory.
This is too absolute. Anthropological research on oral and hunter-gatherer societies shows knowledge is also transmitted through observation, participation, play, ritual, and explicit teaching—not only by speech and memory.
Full reasoning
The sentence claims an exclusive transmission channel: all inherited knowledge was passed down by speech and memory. But ethnographic work on hunter-gatherers and oral cultures describes multiple transmission pathways besides spoken narration.
The HRAF hunter-gatherer summary says children learn subsistence through play, and that adults are active teachers: children learn by watching, participating, and receiving explicit instruction. That directly contradicts the idea that inherited knowledge was passed down only by speech and memory.
Cambridge's Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies makes the same point more generally for oral cultures: it says basic knowledge is acquired in daily interaction, while specialized knowledge is transmitted in bounded situations such as ceremonies and discussion with elders. It also explicitly says oral tradition is not the same thing as teaching how to hunt or gather during daily excursions. So even in nonliterate societies, transmission is not reducible to speech alone.
In short, memory and oral tradition were obviously important, but the post's wording is incorrect because it excludes other well-documented forms of cultural transmission.
2 sources
- Hunter-Gatherers (Foragers)
The summary says play is often a main pathway for learning, and that children learn by watching, participating when they can, and receiving explicit instruction from parents and elders.
- Knowledge and power in oral cultures (Chapter Two) - Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies
The chapter says basic knowledge in oral societies is acquired in daily interaction, while specialised knowledge is transmitted in bounded situations such as ceremonies and discussion with elders; it adds that oral tradition is not teaching how to hunt or gather during daily excursions.
In a world like that, all background knowledge is universal knowledge. All information not strictly private is public, period.
This is contradicted by ethnographic evidence. Oral and hunter-gatherer societies often contain restricted, age-graded, gender-specific, ceremonial, and elite-controlled knowledge rather than one universally shared pool of background knowledge.
Full reasoning
This claim is framed as an absolute rule for small-scale oral societies, but anthropological evidence says otherwise.
Cambridge's Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies states that, in small-scale oral cultures, control of knowledge is a major source of power. It distinguishes between basic knowledge learned in everyday life and specialised knowledge transmitted in bounded situations. That is the opposite of saying that all non-private information is simply public and universally shared.
The HRAF hunter-gatherer summary likewise describes structured differences in access to knowledge and roles. It says hunter-gatherer societies are often specialized by age and gender, and in complex hunter-gatherer societies elites try to control access to the supernatural. Those are concrete examples of non-private knowledge that is not universally shared across the whole group.
Because the post uses categorical language—'all background knowledge,' 'all information not strictly private'—a single well-documented exception is enough to make it incorrect. The ethnographic record provides many such exceptions.
2 sources
- Knowledge and power in oral cultures (Chapter Two) - Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies
The chapter says cross-cultural ethnographic evidence is unequivocal that, in small-scale oral cultures, control of knowledge is a major source of power, and that specialised knowledge is transmitted in bounded situations.
- Hunter-Gatherers (Foragers)
The HRAF summary says recent hunter-gatherer societies are economically specialized by age and gender, and that in complex hunter-gatherer societies elites try to control access to the supernatural.